Check out the poems from
Talking in the Dark up on the
PUSH site.
And here are some others:
Talking in the DarkBefore college, before high school, before my voice
finally cracked, before I could do my first pull-up,
and long before my first real kiss, you and I
held the same girls’ hands. First Karen, then Tiffany,
then Jessica. And by the time you kissed Amy, I knew
it wasn’t her I wanted to kiss. I spent the night at your house
and we talked in the dark until we fell asleep. Those years
were short ones, seem shorter now. I hated myself for lying
so still in the bed beside you, as awkward as a body
and as inarticulate. I have never wanted to kiss you,
only hold you now and then or be held. I know now
that you wouldn’t have cared and just wanted to be
trusted. I have pictures of us with girls at dances.
I’m wearing my father’s dress shirt. It balloons away
from my body. But you are right there next to me,
in my shirt’s reach. Later you won’t stand so close, and Amy
will have to pose us, pleading
closer. No, no. Closer.
Folding Sheets
It was just the two of us then, a sea of linen
between us, her at one end, me at the other.
And then she said lift and the sheet went up
like a white whale, or a hill rising up to be born
out of the earth, a wave slowly swelling, beginning
to break. And then the air underneath is undone
like hands just after a prayer. Just before
the sheet went slack, she said okay and I would
run to her, to hug her, to press my face into the fabric
of her belly. Held there by the moment memory makes
huge and soft, I fell into my mother as I would the Earth.
She’d say to hand over my corners. Let go, reach down,
back away, lift again. Our sea grew heavy from being folded
and folded. Nothing was like that first white rise and fall,
that first huge ballooning and breathing out,
all space ours and so little between us, then.
My Father, Reading to Me
I was so angry when I heard she told,
not because you knew, but because I wanted to
be a man before I stopped being a man to you.
And when Brian said that you were mad
that she did, that you knew and wanted me to
tell you, I pulled the book I was reading
up over my face so he couldn’t see.
And when I opened my eyes to the text,
I looked at the strange shapes of the letters
and imagined you reading to me
like I have never remembered: me in your lap,
your finger tracing the page as you would
the spine down a woman’s back.
Shhh
You drive us home that night, stroke my leg like one
strokes an animal to calm him, though I am
so near sleep I feel guilty. You say it’s okay
so I tilt my seat back, watch the lights
passing through the side mirror, stars slowly strung
like beads: quickly passing and aligning. Such
ease. Your hand rounds my knee and then back.
Slow pulse of the road, impossible to read
how fast we’re going. It’s okay, go to sleep but
I want to watch your reflection in the windshield. You are
the one who has to get up early. You are the one
who’s been up all day and should be sleeping.
But you say shhh and I grip your hand,
unable to see the road and no need to.
